


Strangers, perfect pretenders

by DorMarunt



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: But a bit of comfort too, Canonical Character Death, Canonical references to self destructive behavior, M/M, There's a LOT of angst in this okay?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DorMarunt/pseuds/DorMarunt
Summary: It wasn’t fair, what was happening to him. He didn’t deserve it. And yet, it kept happening.So he put on his dark suit - maybe the one he’d be buried in, who knows? It’s not like it really mattered, once all that was left was lifeless flesh. It barely mattered then, when he still inhabited that skin. He cleaned himself up. He tried to get his brain into some semblance of working order by inhabiting the world of a song from his youth, dancing for a few steps as he left. It was time.
Relationships: Helsinki | Mirko Dragic/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	Strangers, perfect pretenders

**Author's Note:**

> I’m having a bad day (or a couple). Until the companion piece to Parabola is kind enough to reveal itself to me in its entirety, this sad, ugly little thing called at me to finish.  
> So I did.
> 
> Title from “Strangers” by Sigrid.

It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve it. And yet it happened.

It wasn’t fair for Andrés either, and that also happened, and he hadn’t deserved it either.

Well, maybe in Andrés’ case it was also an issue of optics. He didn’t deserve to have a disease rob him of his future. But he also didn’t deserve to be shot down like that, to be hunted, downright murdered. To have his death paraded on live TV, turning into talk-show fodder for weeks, months; having his life, his misgivings, his perceived motives dissected and misinterpreted by people who didn’t know the first thing about him.

Sure, Andrés was not a good person, not even close. He was good to Martín, to his brother, and, to some degree, to his lovers and wives as well. But inside, he was a force to be reckoned with. He was very much a psychopath, turning on his terrifying side in seconds. But he always had a code to fit his twisted beliefs, one that he followed and never deviated from. 

He was awful at accepting instructions - after all, the first thing he did in the Mint was to disregard the Professor’s first rule and order a hostage killed. Inexcusable, Martín knew it. Then, by the words of that hostage, Ariadna, he’d slipped into the downright grotesque with his actions, and Martín couldn’t help but ask himself why. Why had he gone so off the rails? Was that his swan song? Did he do all that as a final symphony of ugly, taking out all the evil in him, in every possible way, only to end it all with his sacrifice? An act of perceived self-redemption, no doubt. He was, after all, a narcissist. 

Martín could never be sure. Not unless the afterlife was a real thing, and he got to meet Andrés again and ask him. Ask him what the fuck he was thinking in that chapel, not just in the bank. 

Martín flirted with death quite a lot at first, after the monastery, after that kiss. After having received everything he’d ever wanted only to have it ripped away from him within minutes. He hadn’t been able to define himself for so long after that, and he fought every day to find reasons to stick around. It wasn’t easy. 

It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve it, any of it. And yet it happened.

And then. _Then_. Just as he’d started to piece his life together, or at least he started to not long for death in every single second of every waking hour, then. Then it happened - Andrés died. Just when he thought he couldn’t feel a bigger pain than before, then came that blow. 

He wasn’t alright, he still wasn’t. He suspected he’d never be alright. Sure, he’d found patches, just like he’d told Sergio. His way to cheat the pain was to use music as means to time-travel to the days before the pain was all-consuming. Before he met Andrés. But that worked for a couple of weeks, at most. Mere days, sometimes. 

Martín took to self destruction like it was his new life purpose. In the beginning, at least. Rivers of alcohol, countless pills, anonymous sex. Stupid fights. One would call it ‘a cry for help’, but there was no one there to hear, to care, to offer that help. He was alone in his personal hell, and nothing he did lessened the pain, not even the slightest bit. Not even the passage of time helped.

More than once he found himself starting to cry, suddenly overtaken by sobs and hiccups, tears flowing with no warning when doing something inconsequential such as doing dishes or taking a shower. Often, too often, when he tried to fall asleep. Whenever his brain relaxed enough, his defenses lowered and the pain burst through again. Ravaging him.

Maybe he was weak. 

It didn’t bother him, really, the idea of being weak. He’d been strong for so long, and to what end? Everything still crumbled around him. Though he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t fair. 

Yet it still happened. 

Stubbornly, he drudged on. Despite the fact that it neither killed him, nor made him stronger. Day came after day, like beads on a rosary. He stringed them along one by one, surprised he’d made it through another one, and another, and another. 

He was damaged goods. Useless. Just a shell, all rage and defeat and disappointment all bunched into human form. Small, ugly, an imp. He was good at pretending, however. He’d pretended for almost a decade that what he felt for Andrés was chaste, that it was brotherly love, admiration, loyalty. He could pretend still. 

The band of criminals Sergio had gathered was a tiresome bunch. They didn’t like him, they didn’t understand him. They did make efforts to try to include him. And it worked, in the moment at least. In small, separate moments, he felt like he belonged, and in those strange little bubbles of belonging he felt like things could be different, but- That never lasted. Everyone knew each other, they had their own petty dramas, their stupid conflicts, and Martín was always at the edges, watching from the sidelines.

Even Sergio- the absolute fucker. He, who advocated against personal relationships during the heists, and quite passionately so when it came to the one between Martín and Andrés, even _he_ had fallen in love. Mystifyingly, he fell in love with the enemy. Martín didn’t want to get involved in _that_ particular mess, so he gave him and Raquel some space. Maybe even some forgiveness.

So he tried. He put in the effort, he put on the mask of the unaffected, detached Palermo, and he worked to make the plan a reality. The plan.

Their plan.

Helsinki was an interesting one, though. For a moment, in the beginning, he thought he and Nairobi were an item, but no, the guy was _flirting_ with him. Flirting. With _him._

So he indulged him, one night. They fucked, and it was, frankly, fantastic, but then- Inexplicably, he wanted to stick around. Martín didn’t do sticking around anymore, and he’d made it abundantly clear. But no, the guy wanted to stick around, to maybe talk? To touch further. To take more, way more than Martín was willing - and, frankly, able - to give. 

What was it, no personal relationships?

No personal relationships, Helsinki. Boom, boom, ciao. It was spelled out, in big flashing letters, and the guy still went in for a hug. For a brief moment, Martín had forgotten himself there, between those thick arms, and almost fell into the hug. Almost.

He knew better, though. Give nothing, get nothing in return, save for the disappointment inherent in living his type of life. 

So he tried harder to keep them all at bay, to show them the ugliness he harbored inside; and it worked. 

They learned to hate him soon enough. To challenge him, to doubt. 

That’s why, when everything had gone horribly wrong in the bank, he fell right back into his old patterns. How could he not, when the band of basically children chose to focus their attention on their own inconsequential shit, on petty dramas, on lingering on lost fights. All instead of focusing on the plan. 

He had to sit by and watch the various ways in which his beautiful plan was pushed to the sidelines, all his efforts mocked. Another thing he’d poured his soul into, and the world irreverently pissed on. An affront to the memory of Andrés, and at least that should have made him angrier, but somehow the walls of his self-hatred rose high enough that not even this couldn’t break through enough to make him _mad._ To make him fight.

So, why bother? Why should he have to endure even more of it? To what end? How much pain was he supposed to carry on his shoulders before he crumpled and fell. Because he showed no signs of that, no matter how much shit life threw his way, over and over and over again. He never fell deep enough; it certainly wasn’t making him stronger but it somehow wasn’t killing him either. 

It wasn’t fair, what was happening to him. He didn’t deserve it. And yet, it kept happening.

So he put on his dark suit - maybe the one he’d be buried in, who knows? It’s not like it really mattered, once all that was left was lifeless flesh. It barely mattered then, when he still inhabited that skin. He cleaned himself up. He tried to get his brain into some semblance of working order by inhabiting the world of a song from his youth, dancing for a few steps as he left. It was time.

But, again, he was denied relief. He was denied his way out. 

Helsinki. That fucker. He stood between the explosives and all the miscreants making a mockery of his plan, and somehow, that stopped Martín from pushing the button. That headstrong, oblivious fucker, he held him, again, like his arms were enough to swallow all his pain. He anchored him there. Still stuck in his misery. 

Helsinki had been a surprise from the start, and Martín did not like it one bit. He’d pegged Helsinki as a mindless soldier, made to follow rules and to hurt with no remorse. But he wasn’t that, not even close. He sought warmth and human contact, he was kind, he tried to show his kindness to Martín in the monastery when all that Martín wanted - needed, really - was to be taken out of his head, instead of deeper inside his soul. Martín hated it. It wasn’t what he wanted, what he needed.

What he deserved. 

And yet, it happened. 

And there, in the Bank, in front of the hostages and his “team mates”, it happened again - Helsinki held him close, keeping him from jumping at the last second. Why wasn’t he allowed to leave? Why was he cursed to live through all of this pain? Exactly how much more was he supposed to take? His life was a jumbled mess, and the last thing he found to hang on to, The Plan, was going to shit as well. If they wanted it so much, they could have it, the last piece of him. The last thing he had left of Andrés.

He had nothing. He _was_ nothing. Maybe that’s why, when Nairobi fell, and Helsinki sunk, Martín felt the veil lifted from his own eyes. He saw in Helsinki, in the gun he held to Gandía, he heard it in the fire of his words, he felt it in the gunshots still screaming in his ears; he saw his own hurt mirrored back at him. 

He saw in his eyes, blue reflecting blue, he saw the darkness settling over them just like it had settled over his own. He saw the weight, the ugly and the despair, his constant companions for half a decade. He knew exactly the pit of darkness that Helsinki was hurtling towards, and he wouldn’t have it. 

Helsinki. Just like Martín, he absolutely didn’t deserve any of this. It was in no way fair. And yet it happened.

Except this time, the pain that was cutting deep at Helsinki, it was of Martín’s own making. So he offered a hand, a way out like he himself hadn’t received when it was in his own soul that the hurt was settling. The debt of pain Helsinki was taking onto himself was not for him to pay; it was all Martín. The pain he’d painted onto those sky-blue eyes, it was all of his own making, markings of his ugly soul, his selfish sins. 

So he offered a hand. Words, apologies - heartfelt, sure, but not nearly enough. He couldn’t fix the shit he’d done, he knew it and he knew he deserved to pay for it - himself, but not Helsinki. 

_I won’t let you fall,_ he said. And meant it.

And to his surprise, Helsinki - the fierce, the fiery, and beautiful - he offered his own hand in return. 

It happened. It was unfair, and none of them deserved it. But maybe, just maybe, they could find a way out of the dark. Together.


End file.
